Archaeology News Online

An international team of scientists digging in a sea cave in Indonesia has discovered the world's most pristine record of tsunamis, a 5,000-year-old sedimentary snapshot that reveals for the first time how little is known about when earthquakes trigger massive waves. Researchers stand in the trench of a sea cave [Credit: Earth Observatory of Singapore] "The devastating 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami caught millions of coastal residents and the scientific community off-guard," says co-author Benjamin Horton, a professor in the Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. "Our geological record from a cave illustrates that we still cannot predict when the next earthquake will happen." "Tsunamis are not evenly spaced through time," says Charles Rubin, the study's lead author and a professor at the Earth Observatory of Singapore, part of Nanyang Technological University. "Our findings present a worrying picture of high

It is a classic chase scene in modern cinematic history. The image of a rampant Tyrannosaurus rex (T. rex) chasing Jeff Goldblum as he sits injured in the back of a 4x4 vehicle in Stephen Spielberg’s original film adaptation of Jurassic Park. But could a T. rex actually move that fast, or even run at all? Illustration shows a Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaur hunting an Ornithomimus dinosaur. The T. rex was among the largest  carnivorous dinosaurs, but was not a swift runner [Credit: © Mark Garlick/Science Photo Library/Corbis] New research from the University of Manchester says the sheer size and weight of T. rex means it couldn’t move at high speed, as its leg-bones would have buckled under its own weight load. The research, published by journal PeerJ , looks extensively into the gait and biomechanics of the world’s most famous Dinosaur and, using the latest high performance computing technology from N8 High Performance Computing (HPC), has created a new simulation model to test its findin

Today mammals and birds are the only true warm-blooded animals. They are called endotherms, meaning they produce their body heat internally. The skeleton of a therapsid dicynodont Lystrosaurus [Credit: Flickr] Endotherm animals are the opposite to ectotherms which get their heat from an external factor like the sun. They are considered “cold-blooded”. The origins of warm-bloodedness in mammals has been a very controversial issue for two reasons. One is that several of the anatomical features thought to be linked to warm-bloodedness have also been found in cold-blooded reptiles. The other is that these characteristics are not always preserved in fossils, giving scientists inconsistent signals about the presence of warm-bloodedness. Our research helps shed new light on this controversy. We’ve been able to come up with new insights about how mammals developed a warm-blooded metabolism that may have helped them survive the terrible mass extinction that marked the end of the Permian period

In the shallow waters of a sea in northern China 500 million years ago, a dazzling new array of creatures was swimming: part of an explosion of animal diversity that would forever change the course of life on Earth. Quietly, in the seabed beneath them, another revolution was underway. Close-up view of fossilized branching burrows preserved in rock formed from an ancient seabed  in what is now northern China [Credit: University of Saskatchewan] For perhaps the first time, tiny creatures were pushing their way through the sediment to create complex mazes of burrows, slowly but profoundly altering the environment around them. Evidence of these early "ecosystem engineers" was published in Scientific Reports by researchers from the University of Saskatchewan (USA) and Henan Polytechnic University in China. The floors of Earth's ancient oceans looked very different than they do today, said Luis Buatois, a professor in the US Department of Geological Sciences and one of the st

Scientists from the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and the Philip J Currie Dinosaur Museum have identified and named a new species of dinosaur in honour of renowned Canadian palaeontologist Dr. Philip J. Currie. Albertavenator curriei, meaning "Currie's Alberta hunter." It stalked Alberta, Canada, about 71 million years ago in what is now the famous Red Deer River Valley. The find recognizes Currie for his decades of work on predatory dinosaurs of Alberta. Research on the new species is published in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences . Life recreation of Albertavenator curriei [Credit: © Oliver Demuth] Palaeontologists initially thought that the bones of Albertavenator belonged to its close relative Troodon, which lived around 76 million years ago -- five million years before Albertavenator. Both dinosaurs walked on two legs, were covered in feathers, and were about the size of a person. New comparisons of bones forming the top of the head reveal that Albertavenator had a

Using a combination of fossils and chemical markers, scientists have tracked how a period of globally low ocean-oxygen turned an Early Jurassic marine ecosystem into a stressed community inhabited by only a few species. Before the low oxygen period, bivalves were larger and more numerous [Credit: The University of Texas at Austin/ Rowan Martindale] The research was led by Rowan Martindale, an assistant professor at The University of Texas at Austin Jackson School of Geosciences, and published in print in Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoeconology . The study was co-authored by Martin Aberhan, a curator at the Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science at the Natural History Museum in Berlin, Germany. The study zeroes in on a recently discovered fossil site in Canada located at Ya Ha Tinda Ranch near Banff National Park in southwest Alberta. The site records fossils of organisms that lived about 183 million years ago during the Early Jurassic in a shallow sea that once co

A scientific team has found the first evidence of parental care in Tanaidaceans, dating back to more than 105 million years, according to a new study published in the journal Scientific Reports , from Nature group. A new species looking after their offspring, Daenerytanais maieuticus, is named after the fiction character  Daenerys Targaryen “Mother of Dragons”, Khaleesi in the TV series Game of Thrones  [Credit: University of Barcelona] These new findings are based on the study of three small crustaceans from different species of the Cretaceous -Alavatanais carabe, Alavatanais margulisae and Daenerytanais maieuticus- preserved in amber pieces from the sites in Peñacerrada (Álava, Spain) and La Buzinie (Charente, France), reference models in the study of fossil records in amber with bioinclusions of the Mesozoic in Europe. The authors of the study are the researchers Alba Sánchez and Xavier Delclòs, from the Faculty of Earth Sciences and the Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio) of th

Large, robust, lens-shaped microfossils from the approximately 3.4 billion-year-old Kromberg Formation of the Kaapvaal Craton in eastern South Africa are not only among the oldest elaborate microorganisms known, but are also related to other intricate microfossils of the same age found in the Pilbara Craton of Australia, according to an international team of scientists. Lenticular organic microfossils in the Kromberg Formation, Onverwacht Group, Barberton Mountain Land of South  Africa. Image shown is an optical photomicrograph of a polished thin section, taken in transmitted light  [Credit: Dorothy Oehler/Maud Walsh (Louisiana State University)] The researchers report that the "Kromberg Formation (KF) forms are bona fide, organic Archean microfossils and represent some of the oldest morphologically preserved organisms on Earth," in the July issue of Precambrian Research . They also state that the combination of morphology, occurrence and carbon isotope values argues that the

Following a discovery in 2015 in Alberta's Dinosaur Provincial Park, Greg Funston puzzled for two years over a mysterious bone trying to identify the species of animal—as well as the part of the body—the bone belonged to. Three Pteranodon Longicepts fly over a misty prehistoric seascape, with two diplodocus dinosaurs  near the shore [Credit: Seeker] "It confused us for a long time, because it's such an unusual bone," said Funston, a UAlberta PhD student in paleontology. "There are a lot of features to it, but none of them are like anything we've ever seen before." Funston initially thought the bone might belong to either a theropod dinosaur or a prehistoric bird. After exhaustive comparison to other known species and insight from pterosaur expert and UAlberta alumna Liz Martin-Silverstone, the team knew the bone was part of the pelvis that belonged to the pterosaur species, an ancient non-dinosaurian reptile species typically associated with flight. They

Bruce Museum Curator Dr. Daniel Ksepka has published a research paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science announcing the discovery of a new species of fossil bird in New Mexico. Artist’s rendering of Tsidiiyazhi abini [Credit: Sean Murtha] The fossil is important because it is the oldest tree-dwelling species among modern bird groups. It lived just a few million years after the dinosaurs went extinct. Because of its place in the arboreal crown, the new species shows that birds radiated explosively in the aftermath of the Cretaceous mass extinction, rapidly splitting into different forms to pursue a variety of diets and lifestyles. The bones were found by 11-year-old twins Ryan and Taylor Williamson, the sons of paleontologist Tom Williamson, one of the co-authors of the research. Surprisingly, the fossil belongs to a mousebird, a type of bird which today lives only in Africa. The team named the new species Tsidiiyazhi abini. Fossil bones of Tsidiiyazhi abini, a 62.5

Why did life on Earth change from small to large when it did? Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the Tokyo Institute of Technology have determined how some of the first large organisms, known as rangeomorphs, were able to grow up to two metres in height, by changing their body size and shape as they extracted nutrients from their surrounding environment. Artist's impression of rangeomorphs [Credit: Jennifer Hoyal Cuthill] The results, reported in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution , could also help explain how life on Earth, which once consisted only of microscopic organisms, changed so that huge organisms like dinosaurs and blue whales could ultimately evolve. Rangeomorphs were some of the earliest large organisms on Earth, existing during a time when most other forms of life were microscopic in size. Some rangeomorphs were only a few centimetres in height, while others were up to two metres tall. These organisms were ocean dwellers that lived during the Ediaca

The results, which include information during the last glacial and interglacial periods, showed that relief from the current dry spell across the interior of the Middle East is unlikely within the next 10,000 years. Graphs showing data measured from two stalagmites from QK Cave in Iran in comparison with other proxy records.  A: Blue line is δ18Oc from QK14 and green line is QK8. Both are from the same came but ~75m apart from one  another. Primary driver for long scale climate change is orbital configuration.  Colored diamonds represent U-Th  age tie points with their associated error bars. B: Orange line is δ18Ow measured in the NGRIP ice core.  C: Purple line is δ18Oc measured in Sanbao Cave, China, part of the Hulu Cave record (Wang et al., 2008).  D: Dark blue line is δ18Oc measured in Soreq Cave, Israel (Bar-Matthews et al., 2003). E: Light blue line is δ18Oc measured in foraminifera collected from deep sea sediment cores (Lisiecki et al., 2005)  [Credit: Sevag Mehterian, UM Rose

A peat bog in Romania provides a new insight into our knowledge of when the Sahara began to transform from grassland into the desert we know today, and the impact this had on dust deposition within Eastern Europe. Saharan dust over the Mediterranean Sea [Credit: Northumbria University] Using carbon dating and chemical analysis, researchers from Northumbria University, Newcastle have shown that significant changes in dust levels occurred in Romania around 6,100 years ago, despite the climate in Eastern Europe being relatively wet at this time, indicative of an extraregional source of such dust, most likely to be from the Sahara. This discovery is valuable new evidence of the impact changes in the climate and vegetation of North Africa may have on dust in Europe and may allow climate modellers to better understand the movement of dust and the impact of desertification, both in the past and the future. The research was led by Jack Longman, a Geography PhD student at Northumbria. His resul

Scientists have identified patterns in Earth's magnetic field that evolve on the order of 1,000 years, providing new insight into how the field works and adding a measure of predictability to changes in the field not previously known. Supercomputer model of Earth's magnetic field [Credit: NASA] The discovery also will allow researchers to study the planet's past with finer resolution by using this geomagnetic "fingerprint" to compare sediment cores taken from the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Results of the research, which was supported by the National Science Foundation, were recently published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters . The geomagnetic field is critical to life on Earth. Without it, charged particles from the sun (the "solar wind") would blow away the atmosphere, scientists say. The field also aids in human navigation and animal migrations in ways scientists are only beginning to understand. Centuries of human observation, as well as the g

Throughout the history of life, new groups of species have flourished at the expense of earlier ones and global biodiversity has varied dramatically over geologic time. A new study led by the University of Turku, Finland, shows that completely different factors regulate the rise and fall of species. Tree ferns still occupy the tropical moist forests in Australia, even though  they shared their 'golden age' with dinosaurs  [Credit: Samuli Lehtonen] "Previously, the debate has been about whether biodiversity is regulated mainly by the interaction between species or the external environment," explains researcher and leader of the study Samuli Lehtonen from the Biodiversity Unit of the University of Turku. In order to test these competing views, Lehtonen compiled a group of top researchers from Finland, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States. The researchers focused on the diversity of ferns and the factors that influenced it during the past 400 million years. Ferns ha

Climate evolution shows some regularities, which can be traced throughout long periods of earth's history. One of them is that the global average temperature and the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere usually go hand-in-hand. To put it simple: If the temperatures decline, the CO2 values also decrease and vice versa. Model of an island volcano. During the last transition to glacial conditions the decreasing pressure  at the seafloor could have induced increased lava- and carbon dioxide emissions  [Credit: Jorg Hasenclever] However, there are exceptions. An international team of scientists led by the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel and the Alfred-Wegener-Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research has now discovered a possible cause for such irregularities. An example is the last transition to glacial conditions. At approximately 80,000 years ago the temperatures declined, but the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere remained relatively

Last year, a team of forensic dentists got authorization to perform a 3-D scan of the prized Tyrannosaurus rex skull at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, in an effort to try to explain some strange holes in the jawbone. Researchers demonstrate their scanning technique, with a user holding a monopod-mounted Kinect  at close range from a T. Rex skull [Credit: Anshuman J. Das et al.] Upon discovering that their high-resolution dental scanners couldn't handle a jaw as big as a tyrannosaur's, they contacted the Camera Culture group at MIT's Media Lab, which had recently made headlines with a prototype system for producing high-resolution 3-D scans. The prototype wasn't ready for a job that big, however, so Camera Culture researchers used $150 in hardware and some free software to rig up a system that has since produced a 3-D scan of the entire five-foot-long T. rex skull, which a team of researchers -- including dentists, anthropologists, veterinarians, and pal